Will we just have to live with the smell of growing marijuana?

Screen grab from a video on how the Nasal Ranger works for determining the strength of an odor. The sniffing tool is used in Denver to determine if the smell of growing marijuana is too strong.

Flowering marijuana plants put off a strong, sweet odor that may smell a lot like money to some. But even to those who use pot, the constant odor from the plants can become a bit much.

That’s prompted air quality officials in Denver to trot out the Nasal Ranger. According to a TV news station in Denver, marijuana accounts for one out of every eight odor complaints there.

“For the odor check, we will use this Nasal Ranger,” Ben Siller, an investigator for the Denver Department of Environmental Health, told 7News. Siller’s folks will talk with the marijuana growers, but if the odor coming from their operations is too strong they could face a fine of up to $2,000.

As the legal recreational markets take off here and in Colorado, this strong odor could become one of those unforeseen issues someone somewhere will have to take control of.

What about Seattle?

In Seattle and the Puget Sound region, the one agency designated to specifically handle odors doesn’t have the rules on its books or permitting leverage to do anything about the smell of growing marijuana.

The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency has had a “handful of complaints” about marijuana odors, said Mario Pedroza, the agency’s supervising inspector. And the agency has discussed the issue internally, … but there’s nothing they can do.

“We took a look at the regulations and talked it over, but this isn’t a place where we could do any good, from our perspective,” he said.

Simply, the agency isn’t involved in issuing permits for any part of a marijuana grow operation and the smell isn’t coming from a process they have any control over, such as smoke from a chimney. So, he tells people complaining about the smell of pot that they need to track down whatever agency issued the business or building permit for the operation and file the complaint with them.

“This is a brave new world and some people are wondering who is going take care of my interest in this, and I don’t have all the answers,” Pedroza said.

Update 10-01:

“The smell of marijuana is not harmful. (And) we don’t have any regulations for odors that are not considered harmful,” Bryan Stevens, spokesperson for Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development.

For the department to take action on an odor, it would have to be from the type of business that creates an odor or fume that can be harmful to your health. But in that case, the city would have already worked with the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency.

Oh, and the agency doesn’t use the Nasal Ranger or anything like it when investigating smells.